Comedian Josh Johnson On: Handling News Cycle Anxiety, His Insane Work Ethic, and Why AI is BS

Dan Harris (0:03)

Hey, everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we have a fascinating, rangy and super interesting conversation with the comedian, Josh Johnson. We talk about how wild the mind is. We talk about dealing with the anxiety of the news cycle, the difference between acceptance and resignation, his extraordinary work ethic, and the kind of healthy obsession he has with comedy. And stay tuned because after I say thank you, we actually have a long and really interesting discussion about AI and his very powerful negative feelings about AI. Just a little bit more on Josh before we dive in here. He is one of the hosts and correspondents on The Daily Show on Comedy Central. He's got a comedy special and excellent one on HBO Max called Symphony and on his YouTube channel.

He, and this gets to his work ethic, he has for three years posted a new hour of comedy every week. Take that in, a new hour of comedy every week for three years.

Josh Johnson, a rising star in the comedy world, really interesting, really smart. Josh Johnson, welcome to the show.

Josh Johnson (1:23)

How's it going?

Dan Harris (1:24)

Going great.

Josh Johnson (1:25)

Nice to see you. Nice to see you.

Dan Harris (1:26)

I'm a fan. Thanks, man.

Josh Johnson (1:28)

Nice to meet you.

Dan Harris (1:29)

I wanna play you a little clip just to get us started. This is a clip of you. Oh, well, uh-oh.

Josh Johnson (1:35)

One of the main things they talk about in meditation is that you should not, you cannot beat yourself up when you get distracted from your meditation and your mind starts to wander. You just notice your mind wandering, bring yourself back to the point of not wandering, and then hold on to that moment for as long as you can, right? And then you'll start to think about stuff, but just come back, you'll be fine. And eventually, you'll get so good at not wandering that you'll really have like a calm mind. And it won't be every day, it won't be all the time. But when you put your intention to it, you'll have a calm mind.

SPEAKER_3 (2:09)

So I sat down, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to do okay. I tried to like crisscross applesauce my legs, and I was realizing, I was like, mmm, my right going to fall asleep. I don't know why I'm not as flexible as I should be.

So I was sitting, put my feet together and everything. I was like, okay.

Josh Johnson (2:34)

Just breathe.

SPEAKER_3 (2:36)

Just breathe, just think about your breath.

Josh Johnson (2:37)

Hold on to the ideas of your breath. Just think about how you're breathing. That's how you stay present. Every breath is important. Being present is important.

SPEAKER_3 (2:47)

Don't think about anything else.

Josh Johnson (2:49)

Don't think about how we left the gold standard. So now there's really nothing but fear and anxiety backing up the dollar and the sort of like weighted debt system that we live in because it really is the only thing holding us together is like the expectation that it can't possibly fall apart because if it ever fell apart, it would fall apart for everyone. It's basically like our economy, our government is holding a gun to the heads of us and every other nation at the same time.

And if we at all stop this thing, if we ever stop this machine from running, maybe we could like release ourselves from the idea of this like economic, like if we're being honest, like an economic enslavement to the dollar and to the ideas behind the dollar. And we could end up in a better world, a world where like maybe you could actually work with some sort of meritocracy for both your efforts and for your work. And if we got there, if we were able to do that, I wandered, I wandered and I even went around, okay.

SPEAKER_3 (3:47)

All right, all right.

Josh Johnson (3:49)

And so I went ahead and I stopped meditating.

I stopped meditating. Maybe I'll start again one day, but I stopped meditating because it was bad for my mental health. At least the way I was doing it, because I was doing it wrong. It was basically just me crashing out with my eyes closed in a quiet room with a drippy faucet.

Dan Harris (4:19)

So I play that because I'm just curious, is that your actual experience with meditation? Have you ever gone back to it since your gold standard jag?

Josh Johnson (4:28)

Yeah, no, I try to go back to it. But the thing, this is my other thing about meditation, anxiety, even being depressed sometimes like that, is that like, this is not a popular thing to say, but sometimes those emotions are just like right.